Posts dated: June2010

The National Academies have just released Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century. You can read it online, one page at a time.  Otherwise, you have to come up with the $76.50 it costs in print (electronic versions are somewhat cheaper).

Sustainability, it says, has four goals:

• Satisfy human food, feed, and fiber needs, and contribute to biofuel needs.
• Enhance environmental quality and the resource base.
• Sustain the economic viability of agriculture.
• Enhance the quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society as a whole.

To get there, the report proposes “two parallel and overlapping efforts:”

The incremental approach would be directed toward improving the sustainable performance of all farms, irrespective of size or farming system type….

The transformative approach would apply a systems perspective to agricultural research to identify and understand the significance of the linkages between farming components and how their interconnectedness and interactions with the environment make systems robust and resilient over time.

The report’s main conclusion:

If U.S. agricultural production is to meet the challenge of maintaining long-term adequacy of food, fiber, feed, and biofuels under scarce or declining resources and under challenges posed by climate change…agricultural production will have to substantially accelerate progress toward the four sustainability goals.

Take that, industrial agriculture!

With the politics out of the way (see yesterday’s post), let’s talk about what’s superb in the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report: the scientific review and analysis.

This was based on reviews produced by the Nutrition Evidence Library (NEL), which apparently recruited dozens of people to identify articles, assess their quality by uniform criteria, and rank the overall evidence as limited, moderate, or strong and consistent or inconsistent.

I particularly like the way the report organizes the research review by questions (of which there are 56, if I counted right).  The questions cover a great range of topics.  Examples:

• What nutrients and dietary components are overconsumed by the general public?
• Can a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement prevent chronic disease?
• What is the role of prebiotics and probiotics in health?
• What are health effects related to consumption of nuts?
• What are the health effects related to consumption of chocolate?
• How do the health outcomes of a vegetarian diet compare to those of a diet which customarily includes animal products?
• How are non-caloric sweeteners related to energy intake and body weight?
• What amount of water is recommended for health?

Questions are followed immediately by Conclusions, Implications, and Review of the Evidence. All of this is written with great clarity, accompanied by thoughtful comments, and packed with useful information.

Here is just one example (I’ve emphasized the evaluative words):

What is the Relationship between Vegetable Protein and/or Soy Protein and Selected Health Outcomes? Few studies are available, and the limited body of evidence suggests that vegetable protein does not offer special protection against type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, and selected cancers. Moderate evidence from both cohort and cross-sectional studies show that intake of  vegetable protein is generally linked to lower blood pressure. Moderate evidence suggests soy protein may have small effects on total and low density lipoprotein cholesterol in adults with normal or elevated blood lipids, although results from systematic reviews are inconsistent. A moderate body of consistent evidence finds no unique benefit of soy protein on body weight. A limited and inconsistent body of evidence shows that soy protein does not provide any unique benefits in blood pressure control.

Readers may disagree with the committee’s research interpretations, but its conclusions deserve serious consideration.

And, if anyone wants to know the state of the available science on any of a large number of questions in nutrition, this report is the place to look first.

Student alert: I will be using this report in classes.

I’ve heard rumors that some members of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) believe that commentators did not give a fair shake to their recently released report (see previous post).

I complained that the DGAC report is difficult to read because its pieces are presented online in a great many individual pdf files that must be downloaded separately.  Fortunately, Cornell student Daniel Green created a single Web-based file.

I have now read the report, or at least browsed through its 699 pages, and I agree that it is better than it first appeared and deserves a revisit (which I am doing in two parts, the second tomorrow).

As with previous Dietary Guidelines, both politics and science underlie this report.  The science components of this report are stunning—as good as such things get—and make this document an invaluable resource.

Why did everyone, including me, miss this?  Politics, of course.  The politics appear unchanged from previous versions (for that, see Food Politics).

The science in this report gives clear guidance for action.  But the report obfuscates its most important messages.

The Executive Summary makes the advice seem dull. The Summary is the part everyone reads first and often the only part anyone reads.  Try this:

The 2010 DGAC report concludes that good health and optimal functionality across the life span are achievable goals but require a lifestyle approach including a total diet that is energy balanced and nutrient dense…SoFAS (added sugars and solid fats) contribute approximately 35 percent of calories to the American diet….Reducing the intake of SoFAS can lead to a badly needed reduction in energy intake and inclusion of more healthful foods into the total diet.

Obesity, it says, is a big problem.  The food environment is a big problem.  What to do about them?  SoFAS.

The report introduces a new euphemism, SoFAS (Solid Fats and Added Sugars).  The meaning of added sugars is obvious.  But what are solid fats?  For that, you must wait until page 183 (on the Daniel Green file):

Solid fats are fats that are solid at room temperature. Solid fats come from many animal foods and can be made from vegetable oils through hydrogenation. Some common solid fats are butter, beef tallow (tallow, suet), chicken fat, pork fat (lard), stick margarine, and shortening. Foods high in solid fats include many cheeses, creams, ice cream, well-marbled cuts of meats, regular ground beef, bacon, sausages, poultry skin, and many baked goods (such as cookies, crackers, donuts, pastries, and croissants).

Earlier (p. 24), the report listed the principal food sources of SoFAS:

Solid fats (percent of solid fat intake)

• Grain-based desserts, including cakes, cookies, pies, doughnuts, and granola bars (10.9%)
• Regular cheese (7.7%)
• Sausage, franks, bacon, and ribs (7.1%)
• Pizza (5.9%)
• Fried white potatoes, including French fries and hash browns (5.5%)
• Dairy-based desserts, such as ice cream (5.1%)

Added sugars (percent of added sugars intake)

• Soda (36.6%)
• Grain-based desserts (11.7%)
• Fruit drinks (11.5%)
• Dairy-based desserts (6.4%)
• Candy (6.2%)

The report does not say to eat less of these foods; it talks about nutrients.  In various places in the report, the report says [with my comments in brackets]:

• Significantly reduce intake of foods containing added sugars and solid fats because these dietary components contribute excess calories and few, if any, nutrients. In addition, reduce sodium intake and lower intake of refined grains, especially refined grains that are coupled with added sugar, solid fat, and sodium. [Nutrients, not foods].
• Eat less of these: calories from SoFAS, added sugars, solid fats, refined grains, sodium, saturated fat. [Ditto]
• Significantly lower excessive calorie intake from added sugars, solid fats, and some refined grain products. [Ditto]
• Strategies to prevent childhood obesity should include efforts to reduce surplus energy intake, especially energy from foods and beverages that provide empty calories from added sugars and solid fats. [Ditto]
• Intake of caloric beverages, including SSB [sugar-sweetened beverages], sweetened coffee and tea, energy drinks, and other drinks high in calories and low in nutrients should be reduced in consumers needing to lower body weight.  [Only overweight people need to worry about these foods?]

Only once does the report say the clear and simple: “Avoid sugar-sweetened beverages” (p. 65).  Nowhere does it explicitly say to eat less steak, hamburger, French fries, pizza, cookies, or ice cream.

Like previous editions of the Dietary Guidelines, this one talks about foods in the context of eat more (fruits and vegetables).  For eat less advice, it switches to nutrients.  I’d call this obfuscation (and politics).

But the report—for the first time—emphasizes environmental influences on obesity:

The 2010 DGAC recognizes that the current food environment does not adequately facilitate the ability of Americans to follow the evidence-based recommendations outlined in the 2010 DGAC Report. Population growth, availability of fresh water, arable land constraints, climate change, current policies, and business practices are among some of the major challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure that these recommendations can be implemented nationally.

What business practices?  It doesn’t say.  It does, however, recommend:

• Improve foods sold and served in schools, including school breakfast, lunch, and afterschool meals and competitive foods so that they meet the recommendations of the IOM report on school meals….
• Increase comprehensive health, nutrition, and physical education programs and curricula in US schools and preschools, including food preparation, food safety, cooking, and physical education classes and improved quality of recess….
• Remove sugar-sweetened beverages and high-calorie snacks from schools, recreation facilities, and other places where children gather.
• Develop and enforce responsible zoning policies for the location of fast food restaurants near schools and places where children play….

This is excellent advice.  But how about some suggestions about what individuals might do about it?

The report says little about food marketing.  Beyond “Develop and enforce effective policies regarding marketing of food and beverage products to children…,” the report says virtually nothing about the well documented impact of food marketing on children’s food choices, dietary intake, and health.  Unless I missed it someplace, the research review does not cite the Institute of Medicine’s 2006 landmark report, Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity.

It buries the need for policy changes in long wordy lists.  It states the needs for low-income Americans to have access to and afford healthier foods; to produce fruits, vegetables, and grains sustainably; to ensure household food security; to promote sustainable aquaculture; and to encourage the food service industry to serve healthier foods and smaller portions.  It does not—and perhaps cannot—recommend policy changes to achieve these important goals.

Overall, the report contains plenty of material for food, nutrition, and health advocates to work with, but you have to read between the lines to find it.

Recall the process.  This committee’s report is advisory. From 1980 through 2000,  dietary guidelines advisory committees actually wrote the final Dietary Guidelines.   No more.  Since 2005, the sponsoring agencies decide what the Dietary Guidelines will say.

The report is open for public comment until July 8.  If you think the Dietary Guidelines should provide clear, unambiguous advice about how people should eat to avoid obesity and how we can create a healthier food environment, now would be a good time to express your opinion.  Here’s how.

Tomorrow: The reason why this report is an invaluable resource—its science review.

Bill Marler, the Seattle attorney whose firm represents victims of foodborne illness, has seen the best and worst of company behavior when faced with pressures to “voluntarily” recall tainted products.  Here is his guide to good corporate behavior under difficult circumstances.  It begins with “don’t produce tainted products in the first place.”   But, alas, if you do:

First, have a pre-existing relationship with the folks that regulate you. If someone holds your business in the palm of his or her hand, you should at least be on a first name basis. No, I am not suggesting that you can influence your way out of the outbreak, but knowing who is telling you that your company has a problem allows you the ability to get and understand the facts. Do regulators and their investigators make mistakes? Perhaps, but not very often and not often enough to waste time arguing that your company did not poison customers.

Second, stop production of the implicated product and initiate a recall of all products at risk immediately. This procedure should have been practiced, and practiced, and practiced before. All possibly implicated suppliers should be alerted and all retailers should be offered assistance. Consumers need to be engaged too. The goal now is to get poisoned product out of the marketplace and certainly out of the homes of consumers.

Third, launch your own investigation with two approaches, and at the same time. Are the regulators correct? And, what went wrong? Tell everyone to save all documents (you have to anyway). The goal here is to get things right. If it really is not your product, what has happened is bad, but survivable. If it really was your product, then learning what happened helps make sure it is likely to never happen again. More than anything, be transparent. Tell everyone what you find–good or bad.

Fourth, assuming that the outbreak is in fact your fault, publicly admit it. If it is not your fault, then fight it. However, pretending that you are innocent when you are actually at fault will get you nowhere. Asking for forgiveness is not a bad thing when you have something to be forgiven for. Saying you are sorry is not wrong when you are in fact wrong.

Fifth, do not blame your customers. If your food has a pathogen it is not your customers’ responsibility to handle it like it will likely kill them or a member of their family. Hoping that the consumer will fix your mistake takes your eye off of avoiding the mistake in the first place.

Sixth, reach out to your customers and consumers who have been harmed. Offering to pay legitimate losses will save money and your company’s reputation in the long run.

Seventh, teach all what you have learned. Do not hide what you have learned. Make your knowledge freely available so we all limit the risk that something similar will happen again.

In other words, do the right thing.  Excellent advice.

But Mr. Marler cites no examples.  I wonder if there are companies that actually did all this?  It would be good to know who they are.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), says FoodNavigator.com, is proposing “limited” regulation of food futures.

“Limited” doesn’t go nearly far enough.  Food futures need regulation, big time.

In a policy brief, FAO attributes the recent crisis over food prices to speculation on food futures.  Futures trading drove up the prices of food staples—corn, rice, and wheat—to record levels.

Commodity futures speculation is a form of betting that prices will go up or down. In the United States, commodity speculation is regulated, but apparently not nearly enough.

If, like me, you find this kind of trading incomprehensible, help is at hand.

Read Fred Kaufman’s extraordinary piece in the July 2010 Harper’s Magazine: “The food bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.”

And applaud FAO for at least taking a tiny first step to getting speculation in food under control.

This article appeared yesterday in the Datebook section.  The dogs loved the food—a huge relief because we had not tested the recipes (oops).

Challenging the pet-food dogma

Meredith May, San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 2010

In her best-selling food industry exposés “What to Eat” and “Food Politics,” Marion Nestle taught the nation how to shop smarter at the supermarket. Now the New York University nutrition professor and Chronicle Food Matters columnist has teamed with animal nutrition expert Malden C. Nesheim to examine the $18 billion pet food industry in “Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat” (Simon & Schuster; $16.99).

Their research-based work examines the politics, marketing and science behind pet food, and offers pet owners advice on how best to feed America’s 172 million cats and dogs. She recently visited The Chronicle’s test kitchen, where canine tasters wolfed down an easy-to-prepare recipe from the book.

Q: This book began when you couldn’t understand the ingredients on pet food labels?

A: I couldn’t! I was in a supermarket in Ithaca (N.Y.), and the pet food aisle was 120 feet long. I was stunned by the amount of real estate devoted to it. This had to be some huge industry, and it surprised me because I didn’t think dogs and cats had taken over the world. I looked at the label and it didn’t make any sense at all: stuff about guaranteed analysis, profiles and health claims all over it. We gathered all the books we could find on feeding pets, and they were so dogmatic – saying you have to feed your pet this one way and everything else was poison. They were enormously contradictory, and none seemed to be based on actual research.

Q: Is it in the best interest of the pet food industry to confuse us?

A: Of course – they are selling products that are inexpensive to make and profitable to sell, and all they have to do is convince pet owners if they don’t use their products, they are making a big mistake.

They would prefer you don’t think about what’s in there – the byproducts of human food products. There are billions of pounds of leftover parts of cows, pigs, chickens and sheep after they are slaughtered for human consumption, and something has to be done with it or it will be wasted. One way is to feed it to dogs and cats. They don’t care what part of the animal it comes from.

Q: Give us a cheat sheet. What should we look for on the label?

A: If you want one-stop shopping that meets all the nutritional needs of your cat or dog, look for the words “complete and balanced” on the package. That’s code for meeting all the nutritional standards set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) – the non-regulatory agency that sets the pet food standards.

Next is the ingredient list. Our rule of thumb is to check the first five ingredients; after that, the ingredients are so small, they do not amount to much. The first five should be real foods – not wheat gluten or something that doesn’t sound like real food. A lot have meat byproducts in them that are quite nutritious, but a lot of people think they are disgusting.

Beyond that, if you are concerned about the quality and interested in organic, seasonal and locally grown, you can find a commercial pet food that meets those standards, but typically you will pay more.

Q: Is there some truth to the claims that some foods are for aging pets, puppies, weight loss, organic, premium?

A: You can pretty much trust it the way you can human food labeling. There will be cheats every now and then.

Q: Is price an indicator of quality?

A: We were rather surprised by what we found. We bought a collection of chicken dinners for pets that were all premium brands, which is a code for higher price. We compared the first five ingredients, the health claims and price, and although the ingredients were all the same, there was a threefold increase in price. So there’s some heavy marketing going on here. The word “premium” has no regulatory meaning, so you have to read what’s in the product.

Q: What are the main things we are doing wrong when it comes to feeding our pets?

A: Overfeeding.

Q: Should we just be cooking for our pets?

A: People who do say it is healthier. One of the funniest things we found was a big clinical research book for cats and dogs put out by Hills Co. that had a very long chapter about how dangerous it is to cook for your pets, then it gave generic recipes for cat and dog food that were easy to follow. We put the recipes in our book!

Q: Since the invention of commercial pet food, is there any evidence that pets are healthier or living longer? Or the opposite?

A: We were curious what did people do before commercial pet food. But there was little information and an astonishing lack of research about pet life spans. In the last 10 years, there’s been some preliminary evidence that life spans of dogs and cats have increased a little bit, but I wouldn’t want to push that too hard. There’s certainly evidence that pets are not doing any worse since commercial pet food was invented.

Q: The top five pet food companies control 80 percent of the market – who is regulating them?

A: All of those five companies are also either human food companies or consumer product companies. Governing them is a complicated regulatory system comprised of the (Food and Drug Administration’s) Center for Veterinary Medicine, AAFCO and states. States have their own rules, AAFCO sets models it wishes all states would follow but about half do, and the FDA regulation is minimal. But that’s changing.

Q: Is that because of the pet food recalls in 2007 that were traced to melamine in China?

A: Yes, it made everyone realize we only have one food supply – and it feeds humans, pets and farm animals. If we have a problem with pet food, then there will likely be a problem with all food. Sure enough, melamine showed up in baby formula in China and in a lot of products that were supposed to be containing milk. We need a food-safety system covering the whole thing, and the FDA is not unsympathetic to that approach. We need food labels on pet food that we can read, and calorie counts should be on them.

Q: What foods are deadly to pets?

A: Raisins, grapes or macadamia nuts, onions, garlic and chocolate. Little amounts really won’t do any harm; it’s pounds that causes problems.

Q: If you want to cook for your pet, how do you do it properly?

A: Follow a recipe.

Q: On your book tour, what are the most common questions people have?

A: A lot of questions about poop and how to keep the amount down – all these people in Manhattan apartments want to know. I tell them feed a high-premium, low-residue product with not much fiber in it. PetCo even has a sign showing the poop size comparisons using these kinds of products.

Recipes: Homemade food that gives pets the nutrition they need. E5

Homemade Dog Food

From “Feed Your Pet Right,” by Marion Nestle and Malden C. Nesheim (Simon and Schuster; $16.99). This recipe, adapted from guidelines in “Small Animal Clinical Nutrition” (2000), feeds one 40-pound dog. Amounts should be adjusted to the size, age and condition of the animal.

• 8 ounces cooked grains (rice, cornmeal, oatmeal, pasta and other grains and cereals)
• 4 ounces cooked meat (beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, fish)
• 2 teaspoons fat (beef fat, chicken fat, vegetable oil, olive oil, fish oil)
• 1 ounce raw or cooked vegetables
• 1 teaspoon bone meal (or dicalcium phosphate supplement, see Note)
• 1/4 teaspoon potassium chloride supplement (salt substitute)
• 1 human adult daily multi-vitamin, multi-mineral tablet

Instructions: Combine the ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and serve.

Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has written a letter to McDonald’s threatening to sue if the company refuses to remove the toys from its Happy Meals.

This comes at a time of rapidly accumulating evidence for the effectiveness of toys, cartoons, and the like in encouraging even very young children to pester their parents for products, to prefer such products and to believe that branded products taste better.

Here is the press release announcing this action.  And here is CSPI director Michael Jacobson’s statement about it.

McDonald’s has 30 days to respond.  Can’t wait to see what it says.

A reader, Lucas Pattan, writes:

I’m writing to ask if you could do a post over the next few weeks about what you expect the impact of the Gulf spill will be on America’s seafood industry.  GQ has an amazing piece about fishermen and rigmen affected by the Deepwater Horizon, and the information about the fishing industry is pretty frightening [for the GQ piece click here].

I don’t have a crystal ball about the impact of the BP disaster on the Gulf seafood industry, but I’m assuming its effects will cause problems similar to those that happened as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill—only worse.

The Exxon Valdez spill occurred in 1989 in cold Alaskan waters.  Fish and wildlife stocks have not fully recovered 21 years later and it will be years before they do.  According to the Wikipedia entry on this event:

Both the long- and short-term effects of the oil spill have been studied comprehensively….The effects of the spill continued to be felt for many years afterwards. Overall reductions in population have been seen in various ocean animals, including stunted growth in pink salmon populations….Almost 20 years after the spill, a team of scientists at the University of North Carolina found that the effects are lasting far longer than expected. The team estimates some shoreline Arctic habitats may take up to 30 years to recover.

The Wikipedia continues with a comment on corporate responsibility:

Exxon Mobil denies any concerns over this, stating that they anticipated a remaining fraction that they assert will not cause any long-term ecological impacts, according to the conclusions of 350 peer-reviewed studies. However, a study from scientists from the NOAA concluded that this contamination can produce chronic low-level exposure, discourage subsistence where the contamination is heavy, and decrease the “wilderness character” of the area.

It looks to me as though the ecological, economic, and corporate effects of this one will be even worse and longer lasting:

• It’s a bigger and longer lasting spill.
• The economy of the Gulf states have yet to recover from hurricane Katrina.
• Oysters don’t swim.
• Much of the Gulf was already a dead zone created by agricultural runoff and industrial pollution.
• The waters are warmer and less rich in nutrients.
• U.S. energy policy still focuses on oil.

At the moment, is seafood from the Gulf region safe to eat?  President Obama says it is.  I hope he’s right

The FDA is sampling oysters, crabs, and shrimp and doing more inspection of seafood processing plants, closing down waters that seem to be contaminated, and doing what it can to make sure that tainted seafood is not getting into the marketplace.

According to a report in Food Chemical News II (June 21), the FDA says it will not re-open oil-contaminated waters to fishing until:

oil from the spill is no longer observable and seafood samples from the area successfully pass both sensory analysis by trained screeners and chemical analysis to ensure there are no harmful oil products found in them.

Smelling the fish to see if it’s OK?  I don’t think so.